Photo Detective: Bequeathing Your Photos Premium
What's going to happen to your photographs? When there is a death in the family, relatives may divide up the pictures. If no one wants them, photographs—especially unidentified ones—can end up being discarded or sold by whoever receives the leftover belongings. You can prevent your family's photographic heritage from...
Read MorePhoto Detective: Finding Photos Online Premium
Recently, I've received several emails from folks who purchased photos from online vendors hoping the individuals pictured are kin. Is it possible to actually locate a long-lost photograph of a relative? Sure. Stranger things have happened in the world of genealogy. At a photo show a couple of years ago...
Read MorePhoto Detective: Afternoon Outing Premium
Jo Ratliff hopes this photograph depicts her grandmother and her grandmother's three sisters: Minnie (born 1876), Mert (born 1880), Lela (born 1882) and Mary (born 1884). But the confusing visual details make it difficult to say for sure. Sorting out the clues in this picture required searching for data in...
Read MorePhoto Detective: researching Settings Premium
Most submitters to this column ask for help identifying or dating a picture, but occasionally a reader has different questions. Barb Groth knows this image depicts her grandmother's family. She even can date it: Since the baby on his mother's lap was born in 1907, the picture was taken...
Read MorePhoto Detective: 1860s women’s clothes Premium
Figure 1 Figure 2 This week let's look at two portraits of unidentified women taken between 1850 and 1865. In some periods, clothing styles changed quite dramatically from one decade to another. (Think of the period from 1965 to 1980, for instance.) In the 15 years depicted in...
Read MorePhoto Detective: Class Pictures Premium
School's out for summer, but the memories live on in the class pictures of your ancestors. This week, Eileen McFall asks for help in identifying students in this class portrait of the Holy Rosary School, Pittsburgh, Pa. Her goal is to place names with all the faces. Do you...
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Photo Detective: Picture Puzzle Premium
Identifying family photographs for this column has been a wonderful experience. Almost every day, someone invites me to look at a photograph in his or her collection, and we work together to solve the photo mystery. This partnership usually starts with an e-mail request similar to Nancy Mitchell's: "Can you...
Read MorePhoto Detective: Searching for Photos on the Web Premium
I have a friend who tantalizes me with her genealogical success stories. One of my favorites is about how she used a standard Web search engine to locate an ancestral photo on the family Web site of a distant and unknown cousin. Suddenly she had additional information on that line...
Read MorePhoto Detective: Get a Free Photo Analysis Premium
Do you have a photograph you've always wondered about—when it was taken and who's in it? Help is just a mouse click away. In this FamilyTreeMagazine.com Identifying Family Photographs column, I take on photo mysteries that readers like you send in. And here's the best part: It's free...
Read MorePhoto Detective: Piecing Together Postcards Premium
When our relatives had a paper photograph taken, they usually had their choice of formats. In Paula Wolek's case, her family chose to use a postcard for their portrait. This was less expensive than mounting the image on heavier card stock and it enabled the picture to be sent...
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